This blog provides a meditation on the Episcopal daily readings along with a headline from world news:

GOVERNMENT GUIDANCE DILUTES UK BRIBERY LAWS

Arms trade bribery halts justice

Jeremiah 25:8-17

8 Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, 9I am going to send for all the tribes of the north, says the Lord, even for King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these nations around; I will utterly destroy them, and make them an object of horror and of hissing, and an everlasting disgrace. 10And I will banish from them the sound of mirth and the sound of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp. 11This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. 12Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste. 13I will bring upon that land all the words that I have uttered against it, everything written in this book, which Jeremiah prophesied against all the nations. 14For many nations and great kings shall make slaves of them also; and I will repay them according to their deeds and the work of their hands.

15 For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16They shall drink and stagger and go out of their minds because of the sword that I am sending among them. 17 So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand, and made all the nations to whom the Lord sent me drink it.

Cote D'Ivoire

This “prophecy” is certainly influenced by its later editors, who wrote after the re-establishment of Israel, and knew the result of the history which for Jeremiah was still in the future. With hindsight it was of course easy to claim that the Babylonians had done God’s work of punishing the idolatrous nation, before they in turn were defeated by Cyrus the Persian. We do know however the Jeremiah did predict the destruction of his nation, that he witnessed the beginning of the exile, and expressed his hope for the future by buying land in Judah. We know that he saw the turmoil of the time as an expression of God’s wrath. From the experience of current history I would be loathe to burden God with direct responsibility for the terrors unleashed in say, Cote D’Ivoire. I  interpret the wrath of God as God’s non-intervention –he does not intervene because in love he has given the world independence-even as he grieves over the violence of humanity. God’s wrath is the mutual wrath and destruction of people consumed with conquest or revenge.

But does God’s “wrath” have a long-term cunning as envisaged by Jeremiah, so that it results in restoration? I would answer, “Yes” but would suggest a greater and more final cunning than he envisaged. Out of God’s own self-exposure to that wrath in Jesus Christ there comes the “good news” that evil is being overcome by God’s love.

John 9:18-41

24 So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, ‘Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.’ 25He answered, ‘I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ 26They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ 27He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ 28Then they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. 29We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ 30The man answered, ‘Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. 31We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. 32Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. 33If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ 34They answered him, ‘You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?’ And they drove him out.

35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ 36He answered, ‘And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ 37Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ 38He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshipped him. 39Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ 41Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see”, your sin remains.

The salvation of the physically blind man is shown by his increasing boldness and scorn for the spiritually blind authorities. His crucial witness is, “I was blind but now I see.” Jesus confirms his salvation in his encounter with him and expresses the paradoxical nature of revelation, that as it opens the eyes of some, it exposes the blindness of others.

Newton gave detailed evidence of trade practice

Wilful blindness appears for example in a deliberate closing of the eyes to evil. The UK Government’s “Guidance” to the Bribery Laws is of the sort. A nod and a wink will allow big companies to bribe their way in the developing world. The Pharisees’ blindness as depicted by John is more terrible: faced with God’s goodness in Jesus, they call it evil. The mystery of evil is that while it is clearly a matter of will, it ultimately binds the will, so that the person is no longer able to see or do good. Public discourse which trivialises “evil” by using the world only of enemies or violent criminals leaves people and institutions at risk of the moral and spiritual blindness that says with pride, “We see.” Christian people can help by being honest about their own experience of such blindness and its cure. When John Newton finally saw his slave-trading in the clarity of the Gospel he gave public, detailed testimony to the horrors of the trade, adding force to his confession, “was blind/ but now I see.”